CCSSO State Consortium on Educator Effectiveness scee.groupsite.com

As the new national accreditor for educator preparation, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) is seeking volunteers to serve on the its governance committees. This is an unprecedented opportunity to truly shape CAEP as the new accrediting body for educator preparation through service on its first governing bodies. In its commitment to inclusivity and transparency, CAEP is opening the application process to self-recommendation in addition to recommendations from CAEP member and affiliate organizations. CAEP will be soliciting volunteers from various sectors, including P-12 practitioners, policymakers, postsecondary faculty and administrators, employers, parents, school board members, and the public at-large. ..

Following up from the December Task Force report, Our Responsibility, Our Promise, CCSSO is accepting applications from states interested in piloting the ten recommendations from the report and moving forward in their efforts to improve teacher and leader preparation.

CCSSO is dedicated to supporting states to ensure successes in this work.  The application process will assess states' readiness to take on this work, including the political will to carry out the work and readiness to collaborate to find solutions to thorny issues such as teacher/leader mobility and data sharing. 

On May 15, Janice Poda offered a webinar to states ..

Education Week is shining a "Spotlight" for a limited time, free of charge on Teacher Evaluation.  Spotlights feature past written articles selected by Education Week's editors on specific topics. 

This spotlight includes six articles that were selected for their insights on:

• Understanding how teacher evaluation models are changing
• Using combined measures to evaluate teacher performance
• Considering value added and growth index models carefully
• Boosting staff growth and development with teacher evaluation
• How to best evaluate special education teachers

We have created a module with links to the individual articles HERE.  The Spotlight comes in one downloadable PDF file and ..

By Kate Dando

To strengthen state implementation of Common Core State Standards and meaningful teacher evaluations, the Aspen Institute and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) today released a set of recommendations for forging coherence across these efforts at CCSSO's Implementing the Common Core Standards (ICCS) meeting of 22 states in New Orleans. Teaching to the Core: Integrating Implementation of Common Core and Teacher Effectiveness Policies, authored by the Aspen Institute's Ross Wiener, suggests ten actions for state leaders.

"States are actively seeking ways to provide greater support to teachers and principals on both Common Core implementation and ..

Here is information I received today from Stanford colleagues...cut and pasted for your convenience! Equity in American Classrooms A Webinar for Educators: Bringing the Equity Commission to America's Classrooms

Who: Linda Darling-Hammond, Dennis Van Roekel, Renee Moore, and Joseph Bishop

When: Wednesday, May 22, 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET

Where: Registration and more information at this link

More: The webinar will feature report, For Each and Every Child. In February, the 27-member federal Equity and Excellence Commission released a seminal report that stands as a national call to action for equity and excellence in education for each and ..

Join us for the next SCEE webinar on Tuesday, May 14, from 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT, followed by a Live-Chat from 3:00-3:30 p.m. EDT.  Following up from the April SCEE Summit, this webinar is part of a series of information and experiences offered by CCSSO to support states.  Next week, CCSSO's Implementing the Common Core Standards (ICCS) collaborative, Communications Directors Network, and SCEE are focusing specifically on approaches to implementation of ambitious plans.

Our webinar, "Theory to Action: How One SEA Uses Implementation Science," features the Minnesota Department of Education and how they use implementation science to help break down silos ..

I happened to run into a few SCEE members in the Louisville airport following the 2013 SCEE Summit, and they shared with me how meaningful the Summit experience had been for them.  Their appreciative comments were very rewarding and reinforced the messages I had heard from others at the close of the Summit.  On the trip home, I had some quiet time to reflect about what I had personally taken away from this event.

The most important thing I noticed was how actively engaged participants were in working collaboratively to solve their problems of practice.  State leaders came away with strategies ..

BY Jeanne DelColle, 2012 New Jersey Teacher of the Year

Examine the following:

2(l) The teacher believes that all learners can achieve at high levels and persists in helping each learner reach his/her full potential.

Yes! With a statement like this that screams growth mindset, it is easy to see why I have been a fan of the InTASC standards since the moment I laid eyes on them in 2011. They represent a more complete vision of what teaching ought to be, and provide suggestions to help teachers get there. There are ten standards, comprising the core of great teaching, each ..

On April 23, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hosted the Teachers of the Year in the Rose Garden.  You can watch coverage here on SCEE's featured video.  CCSSO's Teacher of the Year program recognizes 54 teachers from across the country and culminates in a week of activities in Washington, DC, and the announcement of the National Teacher of the Year. 

Surrounded by the state teachers of the year, President Obama thanked all teachers for their hard work and dedication, saying "what you do matters" and "teaching is a profession and it should be treated like one."  ..

BY LIZ GRIFFIN

In a continuation from earlier blogs about teacher practice, the importance of professional learning and training, and the role of district leaders from a recent Charlotte Danielson interview, we offer more excerpts regarding teacher observations and the work of school administrators. 

This excerpt is reprinted with permission from the January 2013 issue of School Administrator magazine, published by the American Association of School Administrators. The full article is available at HERE.

The interview questions and responses below about the role of the superintendent will be of interest to SCEE readers.  Danielson contends that ..